Beginner Level

3. Nouns in Spanish

Unlike English, Spanish has only 2 genders. All nouns are either masculine or feminine. Nouns like ‘book’ which are considered to have no gender in English (neuter gender) are either masculine or feminine in Spanish.

When you learn a new word in Spanish it is important to learn what gender it is as well. For example when you learn that ‘mesa’ means table, try to remember it as ‘la mesa’ so you also remember that it is a feminine noun. It is hard to memorize the gender of every single word you learn so here are some general rules that will help you.

General rules for gender in spanish

1. In general, nouns ending in –o are masculine and nouns ending in –a are feminine (although there are some exceptions).

The plural in spanish

Forming the plural in Spanish is pretty straightforward. Here are some general rules:

1. If the noun ends in a vowel, just add ‘s’ to the end of the word. Note that the articles also change from ‘El’ to ‘Los’ for masculine nouns and from ‘La’ to ‘Las’ for feminine nouns. See the following examples: